I'm a golf instructor, and I'm the Director of Instructor Development for 5 Simple Keys®.

What we've done with 5SK® is break down the true commonalities of the game's greatest players and called them keys. If you can achieve more keys, you'll improve as a golfer. All of the Keys are not only achievable (i.e. everyone can get better), but are measurable as well.

They are:

Steady Head

Weight Forward

Flat Lead Wrist

Diagonal Sweetspot Path

Clubface Control

We can measure all of those things, and improving at them is achievable by all golfers of any skill level. The more "keys" you have, the more you have in common with the game's best players, and thus, the better you're likely to be.

These commonalities are pretty widely applied. The way we've defined things ("steady" being "relatively still" not "completely unmoving" and with wider allowances for drivers versus mid-irons), there are virtually no exceptions at the top levels of the game. None. If you can name more than a few exceptions to one of your Keys, it's not a true Key.

So that got me thinking: what are the "keys" or commonalities among the game's best in disc golf?

I'll start off. I think that "weight forward" is one of them. I haven't seen ANY pros throwing off their back foot. I don't have the pressure plate readings, but many seem to reach about 90% pressure under their front foot by the time the disc is near their pec and 100% pressure soon after. These numbers would vary slightly for stand-still throws, but does everyone agree "weight forward" is a "Key" to disc golf? Why or why not?

Borrowing from Key #4 and Key #5 in golf, I think "Nose Angle Control" and "Wing Angle Control" are two (though perhaps they could be condensed into one). The game's best players control the nose angle and wing angle to a very small degree for the selected throw.

Grip isn't a commonality. "Straight Line Delivery" isn't one (see Dan Beto's delivery path for the first exception that springs to mind) either.

So, what are the other "Keys"?

P.S. Forehands are likely different enough too that they might be excluded, as are thumbers and tomahawks.

P.P.S. Re-posted from the "other" place. I'm expecting much better posts here, to be honest.

Fightingthetide wrote:I would think follow-through is one. Where your hand/arm/shoulders move after the disc has left your hand, is generally where the disc will go.

That falls under "nose angle control" and "wing angle control" as far as I can tell. There are, in golf, several components to "Diagonal Sweetspot Path," but in the end, the player has control over that end result. For example, how quickly the lead wrist rolls over in the golf swing will affect Key #4 and Key #5, but it's not a separate key unto itself because it's not a commonality - it varies from shot to shot within the same player.

AchievableMeasurableVirtually 100% common among the best

Those are the criteria...

Right now the list might be:1) Weight Forward (I don't know how much for a run-up vs. a stand-still throw, but "forward" is universal AFAIK)2) ???3) ???4) ???::x) Nose Angle Controly) Wing Angle Control

(You could condense those two into one and call it something like "Disc Angles Control" or something, I suppose, so long as you knew that it meant wing and nose angles.)

Visually measuring is fine, don't get me wrong... and maybe the "achievable/measurable" stuff doesn't really apply to disc golf as well, but I'm still exploring whether thinking about it this way can work.

Perhaps "Clean Disc Pivot" ("snap") can be "measured" visually as the disc moving in a very short frame of time from one side of the hand to the other (or the hand moving around the disc, whichever way you want to look at it). Yes? No? That'd get the last one, maybe the last two, and combine them into something that could be "visually measured."

Fightingthetide wrote:I would think follow-through is one. Where your hand/arm/shoulders move after the disc has left your hand, is generally where the disc will go.

That falls under "nose angle control" and "wing angle control" as far as I can tell. There are, in golf, several components to "Diagonal Sweetspot Path," but in the end, the player has control over that end result. For example, how quickly the lead wrist rolls over in the golf swing will affect Key #4 and Key #5, but it's not a separate key unto itself because it's not a commonality - it varies from shot to shot within the same player.

AchievableMeasurableVirtually 100% common among the best

Those are the criteria...

Right now the list might be:1) Weight Forward (I don't know how much for a run-up vs. a stand-still throw, but "forward" is universal AFAIK)2) ???3) ???4) ???::x) Nose Angle Controly) Wing Angle Control

(You could condense those two into one and call it something like "Disc Angles Control" or something, I suppose, so long as you knew that it meant wing and nose angles.)

Visually measuring is fine, don't get me wrong... and maybe the "achievable/measurable" stuff doesn't really apply to disc golf as well, but I'm still exploring whether thinking about it this way can work.

Perhaps "Clean Disc Pivot" ("snap") can be "measured" visually as the disc moving in a very short frame of time from one side of the hand to the other (or the hand moving around the disc, whichever way you want to look at it). Yes? No? That'd get the last one, maybe the last two, and combine them into something that could be "visually measured."

You may have seen these, but there are some great videos explaining "edge around" throwing - the idea that you are throwing the opposite edge of the disc from your hand, like throwing a hatchet. You want to feel the weight on the opposite end of the disc for drives.

And about follow through - I'm not tracking with you (and that's okay, because you have a better grasp on what you need for this project) on how it isn't an achievable or measurable result. It seems fundamental enough to where any player would benefit from it. Once you control your follow-through, you have better control over nose angles and hyzer/anhyzer angles...but it doesn't really vary from shot to shot or player to player, at least from what I have seen. RHBH, right shoulder finishing above left is always hyzer.

I don't quite get how and to what exact purpose you measure the golf "keys", could you expand a bit on that? It seems "steady head" and "focused visual contact" should present similar measuring challenges, and smash factor could be measured as the difference between arm and disc speed - but how do you measure "clubface control"?

Fightingthetide wrote:And about follow through - I'm not tracking with you (and that's okay, because you have a better grasp on what you need for this project) on how it isn't an achievable or measurable result.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the arm angle and whatnot will change for the desired throw (hyzer, anhyzer, flat, the disc you're throwing, downwind, into the wind, etc.), and it's still possible to deliver a disc on the wrong axis even if your arm is on the proper plane, to say nothing of the differences in the pro follow-throughs (length of the follow through being a big difference).

Simply put, "the follow through" isn't really a commonality, nor is it truly a key to the throwing motion. It's not included in the 5SK in golf because the ball's gone, and while follow-throughs tend to look similar, they'll vary by player. Some will be bent forward more. Some will be thrusting their belt buckles out. Some will wrap their arms around their necks while others choke off the finish early.

I think "Controlled Disc Axis" and "Perpendicular Axis Torque" (i.e. no OAT) are good keys. By the first I mean "controlling the nose and wing angle" of the disc, which as you know the follow-through will inform, but it's not necessarily a direct commonality. If Dave Feldberg and Avery Jenkins throw the same shot with the same disc, their follow-throughs might be different because of how they're built, but you can bet that at the hit or release or whatnot the disc is on the same plane and they're not delivering a bunch of OAT.

Does that make sense?

Hey, I could be wrong, but I'm just sharing my thought process on why "follow through arm angle" might not be a true "Key" in the same sense.

Fightingthetide wrote:It seems fundamental enough to where any player would benefit from it.

Sure, but I think you're breaking it down too much. There's a lot that goes into clubface control in golf, and it includes things like the grip and even the follow-through, but backing it up to the higher-level thing gets you an actual Key. Getting too fine-tuned leads to problems because it's tough to find a commonality.

Fightingthetide wrote:Once you control your follow-through, you have better control over nose angles and hyzer/anhyzer angles...but it doesn't really vary from shot to shot or player to player, at least from what I have seen. RHBH, right shoulder finishing above left is always hyzer.

I agree, but again, what's the purpose of the right shoulder finishing above the left? To control the axis of the disc. So you back up and "disc axis" becomes the key. See what I mean?

Wyno wrote:I don't quite get how and to what exact purpose you measure the golf "keys", could you expand a bit on that? It seems "steady head" and "focused visual contact" should present similar measuring challenges, and smash factor could be measured as the difference between arm and disc speed - but how do you measure "clubface control"?

Steady head = the average PGA Tour pro moves his head laterally during the backswing a tiny bit less than one inch with a 5-iron. There are measurements for the vertical plane as well as the "anterior/posterior" plane too (with the vertical having the most amount of motion), but it's all measured.

How do you measure "focused visual contact"? What determines whether something is "focused" or not? And focused on what? I'm not sure you'd find a commonality there among what the best pros are focused on.

Perhaps "Steady Head Height" is a key, but it seems to me I could probably find some pros whose heads move vertically throughout their throwing motion, and then it wouldn't be a commonality.

Clubface control is simply delivering the clubface at the proper angle for the selected shot. The clubface needs to be pointing left of the target for a fade (righty player) and right of the target at impact for a draw. It's understanding the ball flight laws and something called the D-Plane that governs where a ball starts and how it will curve in the air. You can measure clubface control to very small degrees (tenths of a degree) with doppler radar, high-speed cameras, and simply by watching what the ball does.

I don't think "smash factor" or "snap factor" is a commonality among pro disc golfers because every shot requires a different snap - a stand-still Buzzz from 120' is not going to have the same snap as 500' drive, right?

But perhaps "Distance control" (measured by the ability to consistently throw discs with the proper speed) is a commonality. The pros can all throw discs the proper distance to a very small margin while the poorer players cannot. The ability to regulate arm speed (and a clean release helps too, but that's in the Keys already in my working model) and thus disc speed is a differentiator between pros and beginners as well as a commonality among the pros.

I see what you are saying now. It makes sense that you can't break it down too simple so you can allow for variance in anatomy and even preference.

But my point overall wasn't the exact length of your follow-through, nor the specific anatomical components (beyond basic shoulder alignments), but the fact that hyzers have different follow-through than anhyzer. I didn't know this when I started to work on my form, and once saw a player throw and noticed his follow-through where his right arm finished much higher than his left. I thought "THAT must be why his throws are so good!" and I naively mimicked this motion for a few weeks before a friend corrected me...and I was wondering why my shots were all over the place. I never put 2 and 2 together: shoulder alignment = angle of release.

Fightingthetide wrote:I see what you are saying now. It makes sense that you can't break it down too simple so you can allow for variance in anatomy and even preference.

Yes, and that was put better than I've managed to do so far.

Fightingthetide wrote:But my point overall wasn't the exact length of your follow-through, nor the specific anatomical components (beyond basic shoulder alignments), but the fact that hyzers have different follow-through than anhyzer. I didn't know this when I started to work on my form, and once saw a player throw and noticed his follow-through where his right arm finished much higher than his left. I thought "THAT must be why his throws are so good!" and I naively mimicked this motion for a few weeks before a friend corrected me...and I was wondering why my shots were all over the place. I never put 2 and 2 together: shoulder alignment = angle of release.

I agree, but this is no different than saying the clubface needs to be pointing left of the target for a playable fade and right of the target for a playable draw in golf. They're different shots, as hyzers and anhyzers are different throws. So long as the disc's axis is proper, the throw will come off as intended, even if the shoulders are too steep or too flat. For example, in golf, you can hit five-yard draw with a six-iron if the clubface is at 2° while the path is at 4° (at a particular ball speed, etc.), but your arms, knees, torso, etc. can all be at different angles. They're not consistent, and in the end, they're not what actually matters - the angle of the disc is what matters.

What I look at is balance, posture, plane alignment, rhythm, sequence, elbow forward/lower arm release, and thoracic extension in the finish. The finish is probably the easiest to see issues. i.e. someone is getting thrown around by there hips, the arm doesn't match their shoulder plane, they don't have a big chest/wide followthrough.

If you are looking at high speed footage, the big hitters will often have an oscillation/shaking/recoil of the lower arm in the followthrough.

seabas22 wrote:What I look at is balance, posture, plane alignment, rhythm, sequence, elbow forward/lower arm release, and thoracic extension in the finish. The finish is probably the easiest to see issues. i.e. someone is getting thrown around by there hips, the arm doesn't match their shoulder plane, they don't have a big chest/wide followthrough.

If you are looking at high speed footage, the big hitters will often have an oscillation/shaking/recoil of the lower arm in the followthrough.

(Ball) Golfers all have a different posture, alignment, rhythm, sequence, release. We boiled all of that - the "personality" - away and got down to the true commonalities. Individual instructors in golf tend to prefer different things (like posture, alignment, etc.). You can spot a Hank Haney student from a mile away, for example - but their backswings are different than the backswings of, say, a Mac O'Grady golfer. So "rhythm" isn't so much a commonality, or posture, etc. in golf, nor are many or all of those things commonalities in disc golf.

I respect your opinion greatly, so if you have the chance, consider taking a stab at this with the idea of finding commonalities that are top-level "keys" that are achievable and measurable. If you don't wish to do that, hey, I fully respect your decision and thank you for reading this thread at all.

I'm not sure how measurable things are due to individuality, but feel for everyone is fairly constant. I won't argue there are differences in rhythm and posture due to individuality, however most players I see asking for critiques are so far off any kind of decent posture/balance and lack any kind of rhythm, they don't put themselves in any kind of position to hit. Their shoulders get out ahead of the hips, start to pull hard before any bracing of the front side, lose bracing on the rear side. Most are essentially coming over the top/slicing and striking at the ball(disc) instead of out to the target, which you should be able relate to. It's very easy to see when someone is not releasing heavy momentum out to the target and their posture will not be setup for that release. Players should be able to find/feel their own natural rhythm and balance/posture with the perpetual motion drill or working around the disc. Players should be able to feel that release out to the target with the hammer drill or closed shoulder drill.

I'm more of a disc golf Shawn Clement student which is more based on dynamic feel, than say Stack and Tilt. Bradley Walker on here is excellent with explaining snap, which helped me tremendously with understanding what I am trying to achieve. BlakeT tends to teach snap more based on the feel, like with the hammer pound drills(secret technique).

If disc golf were as established as a baseball or golf swing it would be a bit different but there isn't a set doctrine that is able to achieve the timing needed for a disc golf throw yet. it's not like golf, where you can find rec guys driving with pro level power and just have accuracy/consistency, and control issues that keep the, from destroying everyone.

In dg, the same things needed to throw accurately with power are needed to throw far in general, and less than 1% of disc golfers are able to generate pro level power.

I used to think finding ideal body placement and positions was super important. There are 6-7 common body positions for almost every long throwing pro. There's another 6-7 timing/feel variables that are equally if not more important. You can mold yourself to hit all 7 body positions and still not throw far. You can throw far without hitting all 6-7 of the body positions if you have the timing, it just requires compensation for each missing position.

11 years worth of teaching experience has shown me that teaching the timing is really difficult and probably the most important thing. Positions only become important when they are so bad that they block proper timing or when someone who has proper timing wants to throw even farther.

seabas22 wrote:I'm not sure how measurable things are due to individuality, but feel for everyone is fairly constant.

Feel for what? We always say "feel ain't real" in golf and I'm fairly certain the same applies to disc golf and virtually every other athletic endeavor.

seabas22 wrote:I won't argue there are differences in rhythm and posture due to individuality, however most players I see asking for critiques are so far off any kind of decent posture/balance and lack any kind of rhythm, they don't put themselves in any kind of position to hit.

That's different and not what I'm talking about here. We adjust people's postures in golf as well, because it will affect their ability to do Key #1 or Key #4 or something properly. So posture likely fits in the same way in DG. Some players are a bit taller, some are a bit more bent over, some have more or less knee bend than others, etc.

seabas22 wrote:Their shoulders get out ahead of the hips, start to pull hard before any bracing of the front side, lose bracing on the rear side.

Golf has sequencing too, but Jim Furyk's sequencing is quite different than Steve Stricker's sequencing or Tiger Woods'. They all follow the very generic "knees, hips, torso, shoulders, arms, hands, clubhead" sequence but the rates, the numbers, the measurements are all over the place, both in ranges (for example, hip angle at impact among those players) and rates.

seabas22 wrote:Most are essentially coming over the top/slicing and striking at the ball(disc) instead of out to the target, which you should be able relate to.

Bruce Lietzke came over the top and had a pretty nifty career on the PGA Tour. He still had all five keys. His diagonal sweetspot path was simply oriented farther to the left with a clubface controlled to make the path work.

seabas22 wrote:It's very easy to see when someone is not releasing heavy momentum out to the target and their posture will not be setup for that release. Players should be able to find/feel their own natural rhythm and balance/posture with the perpetual motion drill or working around the disc. Players should be able to feel that release out to the target with the hammer drill or closed shoulder drill.

I agree, but "their own natural rhythm" is not measurable, nor is it a commonality. Those are some of the restrictions I've put on this. We considered "good sequencing" or something as a Key in the 5SK golf system, but it was ruled out for the reasons listed above: there's no way to measure it in a way that yields commonalities and differentiates it from the other Keys. Weight Forward (Key #2) describes HOW to get the weight forward, and it addresses most of the sequencing issues anyway.

So I've already listed "weight forward" as a possible Key in Disc Golf also, and there's a lot more to it than just the numbers. In golf, as I just said, it includes teaching players HOW to get the weight forward. It's not done by moving your head forward (you could get 85-95% pressure forward by doing that). The Key is more "weight forward PROPERLY" (sliding the knees and hips forward as they rotate), which addresses sequencing without being so restrictive as to eliminate 35% or 80% of PGA Tour pros or something.

seabas22 wrote:I'm more of a disc golf Shawn Clement student which is more based on dynamic feel, than say Stack and Tilt.

Shawn Clement's popularity is wildly overstated. He says a lot of things but doesn't do them in his own swing. Not a fan. And S&T is one way, one swing. Properly done it accomplishes the 5SK, but there are other patterns and swings out there which accomplish it as well.

Feels aren't often real. Make no mistake: they're very real to the people doing them, but you can give the same feel to five different golfers and get five different results. We've had people increase shoulder turns by telling them NOT to turn their shoulders (and instead feel something else - I won't get into the details).

I suppose without understanding golf instruction at a fairly deep level, it's tough for me to relate what the 5SK are to other "instructor" minded people. It's crystal clear to regular golfers - if they do these five things, or work on improving those things, they'll get better. That's it. But to an instructor there's a bit more nuance - how the head stays steady, how the weight gets forward, how the left wrist is flat at impact (which isn't really about the left wrist per se), etc.

So I hope my post has not come off poorly. I'm not really disagreeing or anything - I'm just discussing, and hopefully this all comes off as I intend it - as polite discourse. Thanks.

Blake_T wrote:If disc golf were as established as a baseball or golf swing it would be a bit different but there isn't a set doctrine that is able to achieve the timing needed for a disc golf throw yet. it's not like golf, where you can find rec guys driving with pro level power and just have accuracy/consistency, and control issues that keep the, from destroying everyone.

I am not entirely sure I can agree with that. You rarely, rarely find golfers driving it as far as PGA Tour pros (certainly not consistently), and I'm guessing there are almost as many disc golfers who can throw a disc pretty far pretty early in their careers. Speed is speed, and both sports require timing.

Blake_T wrote:In dg, the same things needed to throw accurately with power are needed to throw far in general, and less than 1% of disc golfers are able to generate pro level power.

Yeah, I think that percentage is similar to golf.

Blake_T wrote:I used to think finding ideal body placement and positions was super important. There are 6-7 common body positions for almost every long throwing pro. There's another 6-7 timing/feel variables that are equally if not more important. You can mold yourself to hit all 7 body positions and still not throw far. You can throw far without hitting all 6-7 of the body positions if you have the timing, it just requires compensation for each missing position.

You can "hit positions" in golf and still not have speed, too, just as you can miss a few positions and still hit the ball far. I'm not seeing the differences you seem to be saying exist.

Blake_T wrote:11 years worth of teaching experience has shown me that teaching the timing is really difficult and probably the most important thing. Positions only become important when they are so bad that they block proper timing or when someone who has proper timing wants to throw even farther.

The golf instructors with whom I work daily call it "sequencing" and "rates" and I agree - the timing is difficult. Golf might even be more sensitive to it than disc golf given that the ball is sitting on the ground and you're controlling a clubhead, not just your hands (a larger radius with a terminal object moving much faster and needing to be struck more precisely).

But again, I'm partly playing devil's advocate, too. I hear what you're saying.

I just don't think that anyone here quite understands what I'm saying, and perhaps can't without a good knowledge of the golf swing and how it's taught and has been taught. So I suppose I'll just say "thanks" and let this thread go to pasture for now.

Fightingthetide wrote:I see what you are saying now. It makes sense that you can't break it down too simple so you can allow for variance in anatomy and even preference.

Yes, and that was put better than I've managed to do so far.

Fightingthetide wrote:But my point overall wasn't the exact length of your follow-through, nor the specific anatomical components (beyond basic shoulder alignments), but the fact that hyzers have different follow-through than anhyzer. I didn't know this when I started to work on my form, and once saw a player throw and noticed his follow-through where his right arm finished much higher than his left. I thought "THAT must be why his throws are so good!" and I naively mimicked this motion for a few weeks before a friend corrected me...and I was wondering why my shots were all over the place. I never put 2 and 2 together: shoulder alignment = angle of release.

I agree, but this is no different than saying the clubface needs to be pointing left of the target for a playable fade and right of the target for a playable draw in golf. They're different shots, as hyzers and anhyzers are different throws. So long as the disc's axis is proper, the throw will come off as intended, even if the shoulders are too steep or too flat. For example, in golf, you can hit five-yard draw with a six-iron if the clubface is at 2° while the path is at 4° (at a particular ball speed, etc.), but your arms, knees, torso, etc. can all be at different angles. They're not consistent, and in the end, they're not what actually matters - the angle of the disc is what matters.

That make sense?

I'll admit that this is a little beyond my expertise, but here's my 2 cents (and I'll be done). It sounded like you were asking for fundamentals of the game. The biggest problem that new players face is learning to control angles. Nose down, flat releases are nearly impossible for a new player to hit for some reason because they lack the muscle memory and the technique. So while the concept is simplified, I still think a key to disc golf is learning how your body controls those angles. I know that what actually matters is the angle of the disc, but how do you control that angle if your body doesn't know how to go through a proper throwing motion to produce a correct angle of release? It sounds like what you are looking for is beyond beginners basics. Hats off to you for this undertaking. I think it will only help the sport.

Edit - just saw your humble exit. I say keep at it. If you can give us more of a specific guideline in what you are talking about, I bet you could land on something useful.